


Corrupt Recall

by Ezlebe



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Amnesia, Disjointed Vignette-Style, Implied/Referenced Major Injury, M/M, Reconciliation, References to Established Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 08:57:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20288842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ezlebe/pseuds/Ezlebe
Summary: Hux holds the protein powder over the bin, something uncomfortable twinging and refusing to let him drop it. He rolls his eyes and pulls it back, hesitating a few more frustrating seconds before putting the powder back within the shelves. He drops his hand to his side, digging his fingernails into his palm.He looks backward, at the rest of the quarters, finding every corner strange, yet… undeniably his own. He glances to the far end of the viewport, focusing on the carefully placed cap and hanging coat, both beside a holo placard of his achievements.





	Corrupt Recall

Hux holds the protein powder over the bin, something uncomfortable twinging and refusing to let him drop it. He rolls his eyes and pulls it back, hesitating a few more frustrating seconds before putting the powder back within the shelves. He drops his hand to his side, digging his fingernails into his palm.

He looks backward, at the rest of the quarters, every corner strange, yet… undeniably his own. He glances to the far end of the viewport, focusing on the carefully placed cap and hanging coat, both beside a holo placard of his achievements.

The med officer had been adamant that familiarity could mend Hux's memory, encouraging him to go about his normal cycles. He had even been hopeful enough to believe them, but now that he stands in a room that he’s been told is his and among items he’s supposed to have been using, he doesn’t understand how that is possible.

He straightens his head and looks at the protein powder. He doesn’t feel anything familiar about it, not exactly, but something in him certainly doesn’t want it binned. What kind of year could it have been that he’s brought himself to imbibe _that _rubbish? He'll need to review his daily logs.

* * *

"Thank you for your time, sir," Perius says, picking up her data pad and tucking it into her coat while the rest of her team stands in tandem. "We're all glad to see you've recovered. The move on Itanus will now surely be a success."

Hux nods tightly at the toadying, gesturing toward the door of the office and only allowing his neutral grimace to fall when it slides closed.

On Crait, working with Ren as Supreme Leader had been almost impossible, a natural enhancement of how difficult it had been to get anything done when Ren was only party to operations, rather than deciding them. A year later, it is... _almost_ the opposite to that experience; the First Order is instead making more moves than it had under Snoke.

Hux's next meeting is a weapons testing debrief for a cannon that he's barely glanced over the blueprint for, and the next is with Seiner-Jamus about - he squints at the name to determine is likely some sort of shuttle. He rubs at his brow, seeing that Ren is tagged to be present at them as well, just as the last two Hux has just suffered through alone and the six yesterday, and reaches a point that he closes the schedule and opens his messages, quickly typing out a message demanding to know if Ren has _forgotten_ his violently acquired duty, or if...

He swallows hard and closes the application, resolving to instead concentrate on his duty with a quick transfer of the cannon blueprints to the holo display. He doesn't have time to think about why Ren isn't sitting next to him.

* * *

It hurts to look at Ren.

Hux thought, at first, it was only because of the last few things he remembered – bruises forming around his neck under an invisible hand, then _more_ against his side from the impact of the console.

It is not until he realizes that the actual memories don’t hurt half as bad that he starts to think it’s something else. The epiphany makes him angry. He shouldn’t care at _all_ about Ren aside for how he’d done that, finally showing himself no better than Snoke or anyone else with a bit of power, but then _those_ thoughts feel uncomfortable. A twang of discomfort accompanies them, not unlike the sight of the protein powder or the lack of that _something_ in the sonic stall that he keeps reaching for every beginning of shift.

The sight of Ren carrying that soreness doesn’t have it, though; it actually feels new.

* * *

“Supreme Leader?” Hux prompts, keeping his voice low despite muting the other party out of the conference holo.

Ren looks over, blinking slowly with the shift of his eyes.

“You could be more attentive to Thereseus,” Hux says, even as that twinge of unknown pinches tight inside him. A particular diplomat on the call has made their interest in Ren clear, and it would be a waste not try and use it. “His moon in particular is suspected to have kyber reserves.”

Ren drops eyes to the table, and the strange pinch suddenly compounds to a throb. “Any romantic entanglement would be unwise,” he whispers, oddly and suddenly subdued, “Advantageous or otherwise.”

Hux stares for a few seconds, and when he tries to speak, he finds he has to swallow against a dry throat. “Why?”

“I can’t,” Ren answers, the argument ostensibly simple and indefensible, but so very certain.

* * *

The soreness evolves into a chronic ache. Hux finds himself thinking of Ren at every moment of loneliness, as if it's been programmed into him. 

He ignores it best he can. Especially at night, when he knows that he only needs sleep and soon he'll be on shift again, likely seeing Ren in at least one meeting, now he's begun showing up to them. He certainly shouldn't - _doesn't_ care about how apathy seems to be the best way to react when anyone asks about his recovery, or the worsening dissatisfaction he feels when confronted with yet another fact about the year he's missing.

He usually checks Ren on the cams when his sense completely leaves him. He loses more sleep over it than is wise; the screen becomes his world. 

* * *

Hux opens the door carefully, already aware of the potential danger on the other side by the security display. He lifts his chin just as the locks completely retract, staring Ren down. “Yes?”

“Oh,” Ren intones, exhaling in an uneven stutter. He seems to sway a moment, before suddenly his boot is between Hux’s feet and he’s near collapsed into him, nose dug into his neck. “_Hux_.”

Hux swallows tightly and tries not to move too suddenly, uncertain where to lay his hands, and so he stands stiff like a fool. He peeks down the hall, wary, “Are you unwell?”

“Always,” Ren mutters, the word felt more than heard against Hux’s skin. He keeps there a heavy beat longer before moving, slouching backward out into the hall; he looks up then, eyes piercing and fathomless. “Have you… recovered any of your memories?”

Hux suffers a lurch behind his sternum. “Some muscle memory. Little else.”

“I see,” Ren says, lips rolling into his teeth while he looks to the floor. "I thought..."

Hux has never seen him so small.

* * *

_“I would give you a planet,” a low voice mutters, the sparest touch of hot breath and warm lips just against Hux’s ear. “If I didn’t know what happened to the last one.”_

_Hux rolls his eyes under his lids, reaching out blindly to shove the offender away by the forehead. “How **dare** you.” _

_A sharp brush of breath against his forearm, then oversized hands wrapping around his hips. “General.” _

_“Don’t,” Hux says, but he relaxes his hand, fingers digging into messy hair and softly sweeping his thumb up the straight bridge of a nose. He turns his head and opens his eyes – _

Hux blinks at his hand clutching the duvet at the empty side of the bed. He snatches it back, curling his arm into his chest and refusing to… It was only a dream. 

* * *

“Pardon, sir,” Medic Suraas says, folding their hands tight together in front of them, mouth pursed in that particular medical discontent. “I have become… concerned that you are not truly _regaining_ memories, but relearning them through shift logs.”

Hux exhales slowly, suddenly unsure how this appointment is going to proceed – he could order Suraas redirect their questioning, but it seems as if they might have a higher informant. “I believe it was you who said that it may be permanent.”

“Some of it, yes,” Suraas says, opening their hands again to gesture in an odd, twitching manner, then refolding them once again. “But it is very rare for the mind to forget everything in such a tidy block. Have you had flashes? Idle thoughts?”

_Or dreams_, they don’t say, but that seems to echo the loudest.

“No,” Hux says, quietly denying the growing bank of maybes crowding at the edge of his mind, refusing to be dismissed. “Nor has it affected my work. I don’t need the memories when I can read them.”

Suraas stares for so long that it becomes uncomfortable. “But what of your _life_, sir?”

* * *

“General, sir.”

Hux glances up from the readout on his data pad, frowning at the bold interruption when he finds the speaker to be a helmetless trooper.

“Supreme Leader is – ” the trooper glances past Hux, down to the TIE bay, “Is – he is – ”

Hux frowns tightly and turns to look out the viewport, only to find, rather than carnage, Ren as little more than a slumped shape on the clamping mechanism of his TIE. It seems the trooper is anxious for an entirely different reason than fear. Hux observes for a few tense seconds longer before turning back around, pocketing his data pad while marching past the trooper to the lift.

“I can’t pilot it,” Ren announces, hoarsely, throwing his helmet across the bay and into a wall with a clang.

Hux glances up to the looming TIE – painted a stealthy black with the sparest gold trim, in consideration of its pilot. It’s an upgrade from the Silencer that he doesn’t remember designing, but has poured over every annotation and alteration with rapt consideration, and he had requested Ren to take it out for assessment mostly just to see it fly.

He didn’t expect this outcome.

“Why?”

“It’s still there,” Ren snarls in a pitchy shout, then abruptly he slumps, voice dropping to an unsteady whisper. “_Always_ at the back of my mind… I cannot stand the sight of my hand on the controls.”

Hux rolls his lips together for a beat, tempted to pretend that he’s doesn’t know what Ren’s on about, but oddly feeling more driven to fix whatever this might be – he’s _never_ heard Ren uncertain about flying. It's... upsetting. “I reviewed the black box myself. Nothing you could've done might have changed the outcome.”

“Meaningless,” Ren spits, then trembles, followed by a worrying creak of metal from somewhere nearby. “_I_ cannot forget what – that you – ”

Hux takes pity on him, trying not to think about every eye at his back while slowly approaching and crouching carefully down to Ren’s level. “Only for a couple of minutes,” he placates with a tight swallow, because evidently a lack of memory doesn’t make it any less harrowing. “But in the end, it was only a shuttle, wasn’t it? You’ve crashed shuttles.”

“Not the same,” Ren croaks, gritting his teeth so tightly that every line of his jaw can be made out.

Hux moves in a bit further, crooking his head in attempt to get Ren to look at him rather than across the bay. “Ren,” he sees himself stroking down Ren’s nose with a knuckle before he can quite catch himself, shocked at his own gesture even while forcing himself to keep talking, “It was fine.”

Ren’s eyes go wide then slam shut, abruptly reaching around his own head with both arms and further curling into himself, mumbling near unintelligible, yet damning words. “_Mu-muscle memory_.”

Hux snatches his hand into his chest and finds himself staggering back, choking on his next breath.

* * *

The logs offer little. Hux swipes his fingers up the screen, watching file after file sweep up in tidy lines of data, but all he finds is a reason to pace a hole in the floor.

He’s gone over journals from after Crait to just before his injury and, for the first time, all the attention to his work feels pointless. He can see that he supervised repairs for the Supremacy, directed a battalion against an uprising on Tralus, advised on the TIE's stupid gold trim, yet nowhere does it mention why he’s got protein on his shelves and nights full of dodgy visions.

He could demand answers. It couldn’t have been a secret, if he truly wasn't alone in his quarters, for all no one has said anything to him since he’s left the med center, but he doubts anyone with sense would approach him with such gossip. He discourages it, and frankly, any such useless socialization; he had given up on that long ago.

Or so he thought.

… The _quarters_. He certainly had to request them, didn’t he? Well, he didn’t, but he would, and that form has a very stringent purpose field.

He feels something of a fool as he stops in the middle of the room, for all it’s empty except his sofa and desk, and requests the records. His data pad then immediately blips notifying him of the request, which he promptly clears – hell, this feels so _inane_ when he’s impatient.

The confirmation follows with the accompanying document, and he hesitates a moment before gently tapping on the icon to bring up request. He glances down the various options – his old quarters for a new residency on the _Supremacy_, the ticked box for separate sleeping quarters rather than another studio, then…

The provided reason is as damning as it is likely sarcastic, surely as he was filing this for his own approval.

‘_To better accommodate the Supreme Leader._’

He stares at the data pad for a few seconds longer before he throws it, having some trouble controlling his body as his mind seems to slowly drift outward. He looks down when his hand hits a hard surface, and realizes he’s on the floor, his breath coming too fast and – oh.

He hasn’t had an attack like this in a long while.

And what kind of bloody stupid reason is that? The quarters certainly _aren’t_ accommodating Supreme Leader.

‘_Why_?’ Hux feels waiting at the tip of his tongue. He knows why, though: he’s forgotten everything, and Ren will never miss a chance to perpetuate suffering, which seems to be going rather well by the breakdown in the TIE bay. He scoffs, then grits his teeth, “Bastard.”

* * *

“Because it wasn’t the med-defib; no, _that_ was lost in the wreckage. I used the only thing I could – _me_,” Ren says, rising from the chair with both hands tightened to fists at his sides, “_I_ brought you back with the Dark. I didn’t expect it to be a deal: your life for… for something else.”

Hux reaches up, briefly pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead before running the hand through his hair. “I hit my head. You were _there_.”

“The medical officers told me it was impossible for you to lose such specific memories so perfectly,” Ren argues, voice rising even further, as if he thinks just shouting will make him more right. “I know the _truth_.”

Hux absorbs the manic look in Ren’s eyes, characteristically intense and ever dark, but with an edge of grief that lances into Hux’s sternum like a blade. “I’ve had dreams,” he confesses, briefly rolling his lips together to bite sharply between his teeth, “But they’re – they’re not – I don’t know if they’re real.”

Ren’s angry, senseless snarling goes eerily silent.

“It’s not how it was explained to me, flashbacks or anything that might distract me,” Hux says, hearing the defense echo weakly through the room. “Some are simply meetings, or a ship design I was working on, once even being mouthed off to by that Resistance vagrant.” He swallows against a dry throat, digging gloved fingertips into his palms. “But sometimes it’s a – a different _sort_ of meeting. With you.”

Ren sways not unlike the scene in the hall days ago, then suddenly slumps back into his seat, eyes dropping to stare at the corner of the floor. A truly awful wheeze resounds, wet and uneven, like Hux has winded him rather than simply spoken.

“I’ve never had that sort of intimacy, or even considered it,” Hux admits in a rush, realizing with some embarrassment that not only is he telling secrets, but he is absolutely babbling them like a nervous teenager. “Sex, yes, but – but this isn’t just that, is it? So it doesn’t seem real, and I can’t determine if it’s just a fantasy or if I truly… experienced it.”

Ren does little more than breath heavily for a worrying time, then finally, he looks up. “You did.”

* * *

“I’m certain it has nothing to do with destroying the holotable.”

“I told you that didn’t happen,” Ren argues in a sullen grumble, squeezing at Hux’s thigh.

“And you’re an awful liar,” Hux says, rolling his eyes as he shifts onto his back, feeling sweat settling and drying against exposed skin; he needs to stand, go to the refresher, but his quarters finally feel like his after so many uneasy weeks. “You cannot concur with every lewd thought, then deny every time I was angry with you.”

Ren goes quiet, then rolls in closer again to dig his nose in Hux’s shoulder. “I’m the Supreme Leader.”

“Which in theory makes you lawfully correct, but not realistically,” Hux says, closing his eyes while Ren continues to burrow further into his side, fitting bulky shoulders under his arm and tucking a leg between his knees.

“Insolent,” Ren mumbles, lips soft against the thin skin at the joint of Hux’s arm.

Hux turns his head, glancing down and just barely making out the sheen of Ren’s hair in the glint from the viewport stars. He lifts other hand, hesitating a pair of seconds before sliding his fingers into it, twining locks between his knuckles.

He remembers this now.

**Author's Note:**

> I now have two amnesia fics... published, but I think I actually have like four. It's a weird thing, I don't know, but hopefully it's okay to read? I feel like it doesn't have the right gravitas, but I'm not sure how to fix that, so... Yep.
> 
> I can also be found on the [twitters](https://twitter.com/ezlebe?lang=en) at Ezlebe.


End file.
